Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Queensland, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S. in Electrical Engineering)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Herschel H. Loomis, Alan A. Ross. Includes bibliographical references (p. 219-224). Also available online.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2001. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 96-104). Also available on the Internet.

Ferroelectric ceramics are broadly used in applications including actuators, sensors and information storage. An understanding of the microstructual evolution and domain dynamics is vital for predicting the performance and reliability of such devices. The underlying mechanism responsible for ferroelectric constitutive response is ferroelectric domain wall motion, domain switching and the interactions of domain walls with other material defects. In this work, a combined theoretical and numerical modeling framework is developed to investigate the nucleation and growth of domains in a single crystal of ferroelectric material. The phase-field approach, applying the material electrical polarization as the order parameter, is used as the theoretical modeling framework to allow for a detailed accounting of the electromechanical processes. The finite element method is used for the numerical solution technique. In order to obtain a better understanding of the energetics of fracture within the phase-field setting, the J-integral is modified to include the energies associated with the order parameter. Also, the J- integral is applied to determine the crack-tip energy release rate for common sets of electromechanical crack-face boundary conditions. The calculations confirm that only true equilibrium states exhibit path-independence of J, and that domain structures near crack tips may be responsible for allowing positive energy release rate during purely electrical loading. The small deformation assumption is prevalent in the phase-field modeling approach, and is used in the previously described calculations. The analysis of large deformations will introduce the concept of Maxwell stresses, which are assumed to be higher order effects that can be neglected in the small deformation theory. However, in order to investigate the material response of soft dielectric elastomers undergoing large mechanical deformation and electric field, which are employed in electrically driven actuator devices, manipulators and energy harvesters, a finite deformation theory is incorporated in the phase-field model. To describe the material free energy, compressible Neo-Hookean and Gent models are used. The Jaumann rate of the polarization is used as the objective polarization rate to make the description of the dissipation frame indifferent. To illustrate the theory, electromechanical instabilities in composite materials with different inclusions will be studied using the finite element methods. / text

This study evaluated the performance of state-of-the-practice automated rut measurement systems (ARMS) for measuring rutting in the field at highway speeds under Texas conditions. A total of twenty-four 550-ft survey sections were selected with the objective of establishing representative conditions encountered on Texas highways as well as cases considered potentially problematic for automated rutting surveys. Five different ARMS measured the twenty-four sections at highways speeds and reported their best estimates of the transverse profiles coordinates at 552 stations and the Maximum Rut Depth (MRD) values for each wheel-path at 2,664 stations. These measurements were compared with the manual measurements taken statically at the same locations. The reference transverse profiles were manually measured using a laser distance meter and a leveled beam and the reference MRD values were manually measured using a 6ft straight-edge and a gage graduated to 16ths of an inch. In addition, the effect of different experimental variables on each system’s measurement errors was analyzed aiming to detect which pavement characteristics are more challenging for the ARMS. / text

Classical and quantum Chern-Simons with gauge group U(1)N were classified by Belov and Moore in [BM05]. They studied both ordinary topological quantum field theories as well as spin theories. On the other hand a correspondence is well known between ordinary (2 + 1)-dimensional TQFTs and modular tensor categories. We study group categories and extend them slightly to produce modular tensor categories that correspond to toral Chern-Simons. Group categories have been widely studied in other contexts in the literature [FK93],[Qui99],[JS93],[ENO05],[DGNO07]. The main result is a proof that the associated projective representation of the mapping class group is isomorphic to the one from toral Chern-Simons. We also remark on an algebraic theorem of Nikulin that is used in this paper. / text

Polymer flooding is a commercially proven technology to enhance oil recovery from mature reservoirs. The main mechanism for improving oil recovery is to increase the viscosity of injection water by adding polymer, thereby creating a favorable mobility ratio for improved volumetric sweep efficiency. However, polymer injection brings on several potential problems: a) a high injection pressure with associated pumping cost; b) creation of unwanted injection well fractures; and c) mechanical degradation of polymers due to high shear near wellbore. The high viscosity of polymer solutions and permeability reduction by polymer retention reduce mobility, and simultaneously increase the pressure drop required for the propagation of the polymer bank. The objective of this dissertation is to develop an improved polymer injection process that can minimize the impact of those potential problems in the polymer flooding process, and to extend this application to conformance control. This objective is accomplished by utilizing the pH sensitivity of partially hydrolyzed polyacrylamide (HPAM), which is the most commonly used EOR polymer. The idea of the “low-pH polymer process” is to inject HPAM solution at low-pH conditions into the reservoir. The polymer viscosity is low in that condition, which enables the polymer solution to pass through the near wellbore region with a relatively low pressure drop. This process can save a considerable amount of pump horse power required during injection, and also enables the use of large-molecular-weight polymers without danger of mechanical degradation while injecting below the fracture gradient. Away from the near wellbore region, the polymer solution becomes thickened with an increase in pH, which occurs naturally by a spontaneous reaction between the acid solution and rock minerals. The viscosity increase lowers the brine mobility and increases oil displacement efficiency, as intended. Another potential application of the low-pH polymer injection process is conformance control in a highly heterogeneous reservoir. As a secondary recovery method, water flooding can sweep most oil from the high-permeability zones, but not from the low-permeability zones. The polymer solution under low-pH conditions can be placed deep into such high-permeability sands preferentially, because of its low viscosity. It is then viscosified by a pH increase, caused by geochemical reactions with the rock minerals in the reservoir. With the thickened polymer solution in the high permeability sands, the subsequently injected water is diverted to the low permeability zone, so that the bypassed oil trapped in that zone can be efficiently recovered. To evaluate the low-pH polymer process, extensive laboratory experiments were systematically conducted. As the first step, the rheological properties of HPAM solutions, such as steady-shear viscosity and viscoelastic behavior, were measured as functions of pH. The effects of various process variables, such as polymer concentrations, salinity, polymer molecular weight, and degree of hydrolysis on rheological properties, were investigated for a wide range of pH. A comprehensive rheological model for HPAM solutions was also developed in order to provide polymer viscosity in terms of the above process variables. As the second step, weak acid (citric acid) and strong acid (hydrochloric acid) were evaluated as pH control agents. Citric acid was shown to clearly perform better than hydrochloric acid. A series of acid coreflood experiments for different process variables (injection pH, core length, flow rate, and the presence of shut-ins) were carried out. The effluent pH and five cations (total Ca, Mg, Fe, Al, and K) were measured for qualitative evaluation of the geochemical reactions between the injected acid and the rock minerals; these measurements also provide data for future history matching simulations to accurately characterize these geochemical reactions. Finally, polymer coreflood experiments were carried out with different process variables: injection pH, polymer concentration, polymer molecular weight, salinity, degree of hydrolysis, and flow rate. The transport characteristics of HPAM solutions in Berea sandstone cores were evaluated in terms of permeability reduction and mobility reduction. Adsorption and inaccessible/excluded pore volume were also measured in order to accurately characterize the transport of HPAM solutions under low-pH conditions. The results show that the proposed “low-pH polymer process” can substantially increase injectivity (lower injection pressures) and allow deeper transport of polymer solutions in the reservoir due to the low solution viscosity. The peak pH’s observed in several shut-ins guarantee that spontaneous geochemical reactions can return the polymer solution to its original high viscosity. However, low-pH conditions increase adsorption (polymer-loss) and require additional chemical cost (for citric acid). The optimum injection formulation (polymer concentration, injection pH) will depend on the specific reservoir mineralogy, permeability, salinity and injection conditions. / text

The focus of this work is the experimental investigation of electron velocity distribution functions in the plasma of the Texas Helimak experiment. Texas Helimak has a cylindrical geometry and relatively moderate plasma parameter, which allow the use of a retarding field analyzer that is located approximately in the middle of the vacuum vessel. Electron velocity distribution functions were measured for a variety of different operating conditions and for two gas species, namely argon and helium. Parameter scans, whereby all parameter except the scan parameter were kept constant, were done in order to investigate the influence of the scan parameter on the velocity distribution. It was found, that most electron velocity distribution functions are not alone Maxwellian. One of the reasons therefore is electron cyclotron resonance heating, which was used for ionizing and heating the plasma and what produces a suprathermal tail. It is possible, however, to obtain effective electron temperatures. These effective electron temperatures range from about 10 eV , what is similar to the electron bulk temperature, to more than 150 eV. / text

Despite the widespread interest in graphene electronics over the last decade, high-performance graphene field-effect transistors (GFETs) on flexible substrates have been rarely achieved, even though this atomic sheet is widely understood to have greater prospects for flexible electronic systems. In this work, we investigate the realization of high-performance graphene field effect transistors implemented on flexible plastic substrates. The optimum device structure for high-mobility and high-bendability is suggested with experimental comparison among diverse structures including top-gate GFETs (TG-GFETs), single/multi-finger embedded-gate GFETs with high-k dielectrics (EG-highk/GFETs), and embedded-gate GFETs with hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) dielectrics. Flexible graphene transistors with high-k dielectric afforded intrinsic gain, maximum carrier mobility of 8,000 cm²/V·s, and importantly 32 GHz cut-off frequency. Mechanical studies reveal robust transistor performance under repeated bending down to 0.7 mm bending radius whose tensile strain corresponds to 8.6%. Passivation techniques, with robust mechanical and chemical protection in order to operate under harsh environments, for embedded-gate structures are also covered. The integration of functional coatings such as highly hydrophobic fluoropolymers combined with the self-passivation properties of the polyimide substrate provides water-resistant protection without compromising flexibility, which is an important advancement for the realization of future robust flexible systems based on graphene. / text

The era of big data has led to problems of unprecedented scale and complexity that are challenging the computing capability of conventional computer systems. One way to address the computational and communication challenges of such demanding applications is to incorporate the use of non-conventional hardware accelerators such as FPGAs into existing systems. By providing a mix of FPGAs and conventional CPUs as computing resources in a heterogeneous cluster, a distributed computing environment can be achieved to address the need of both compute-intensive and data-intensive applications. However, utilizing heterogeneous clusters requires application developers’ comprehensive knowledge on both hardware and software. In order to assist programmers to take advantage of the synergy between hardware and software easily, an easy-to-use framework for virtualizing the underlying FPGA computing resources of the heterogeneous cluster is motivated. In this work, a heterogeneous cluster consisting of both FPGAs and CPUs was built and a framework for managing multiple FPGAs across the cluster was designed. The major contribution of the framework is to provide an abstraction layer between the application developer and the underlying FPGA computing resources, so as to improve the overall design productivity. An inter-FPGA communication system was implemented such that gateware executing on FPGAs can communicate with each other autonomously to the CPU. Furthermore, to demonstrate a real-life application on the heterogeneous cluster, a generic k-means clustering application was implemented, using the MapReduce programming model. The implementation of the k-means application on multiple FPGAs was compared with a software-only version that was run on a Hadoop multi-core computer cluster. The performance results show that the FPGA version outperforms the Hadoop version across various parameters. An in-depth study on the communication bottleneck presented in the system was also carried out. A number of experiments were specifically designed to benchmark the performance of each I/O channel. The study shows that the major source of I/O bottleneck lies at the communication between the host system and the FPGA. This gives insight into programming considerations of potential applications on the cluster as well as improvement to the framework. Moreover, the benefit of multiple FPGAs was investigated through a series of experiments. Compared with putting all mappers on a single FPGA, it was found that distributing the same amount of mappers across more FPGAs can provide a tradeoff between FPGA resources and I/O performance. / published_or_final_version / Electrical and Electronic Engineering / Master / Master of Philosophy